A High-Through Technique to Measure DNA Methylation

MethyLight is a sodium-bisulfite-dependent, quantitative, fluorescence-based, real-time PCR strategy that is used to detect and quantify DNA methylation in genomic DNA. High-throughput MethyLight allows the rapid and sensitive detection of very low frequencies of hypermethylated alleles in populations of alternated individuals. The high sensitivity and specificity of MethyLight can be applied not only to make it uniquely suited disease clinical but also quantitatively assessed of these low-frequency methylation events. Owing to its full of advantages of simple procedure, high efficiency and high sensitivity, MethyLight provides a powerful approach for clinical examination, Gene expression analysis, SNP analysis and allele analysis. Coupled with other techniques, MethyLight can be used immediately in identifying allelic alterations in genes exhibiting expressions correlating with phenotypes, Locating an allelic series of induced point mutations in genes of interest. The development of this technique should considerably enhance our ability to rapidly and accurately generate epigenetic profiles of samples.